


In the Early Dawn of Happiness

by Besagew



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Dream Sex, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, First Time, Force Bond (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, Light Masochism, Masturbation, Praise Kink, Sexual Inexperience, Staying Quiet, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Kylo Ren, Virgin Rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-03-28 13:53:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13905408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Besagew/pseuds/Besagew
Summary: Somehow through the force bond, Kylo is able to watch a dream Rey has of comforting Ben Solo the night Luke tried to kill him. However, the comfort becomes sexual with she and Ben deflowering each other. Transfixed and aroused, Kylo masturbates as he watches Rey with his former self.(fill forthis requeston reylohardkinks. Title is from a Rumi poem.)





	1. Chapter 1

When Kylo Ren returns to his quarters for the night, he finds the girl in his bed.

He pauses in removing his gloves, transfixed.

The first time the Force connected him to the girl since she closed the door, he was so startled that he made eye contact with her. She was standing before his throne, looking like she had asked for an impromptu audience, just as surprised as he was. The girl’s shock faded into the same tired, disappointed expression she had worn on the ramp to the Falcon.

He had pressed his lips together, not knowing what to say to her, unsettled at what he suspected would be the first thing to come out of his mouth if he did speak.

He would not beg her. Not again. He had begged enough for one lifetime. Begging had never done him any good--not with his parents, not with Snoke, and not when he begged the Force to save him from Skywalker.

He had crawled his entire life on his belly, servile, hoping to be good enough. But still, no one ever chose him. No one wanted him. No one protected him, not until it was far too late.

Kylo Ren had thought—when they had touched hands, and she had sailed into the heart of danger to fight for him—that maybe someone finally had. Someone who could truly understand, who would stand beside him.

It was an old dream, the dream of a boy long dead, and Kylo Ren should have known better.

He had been mistaken. Even when he chose her over his master, when the Force blazed with the rightness of it, the inevitability of it, when he begged for her to see the truth of what they could be, it still wasn’t enough for her.

He isn’t enough. He is too far in the dark, too much the monster. He will always be alone.

It is for the better, and the reminder is good for him, however bitter the medicine tastes. It is his destiny to be a lone pillar, the strong leader of the galaxy. He sees that now. The way to true strength in the dark is to stand on his own, needing no one. He had cut his weak attachments away, and the girl had cut him away in turn, and he will never fall prey to sentiment again.

So when she had appeared before his throne, he had not opened his mouth. But it didn’t help.

Something about meeting her eyes set all of his thoughts to stray in pasture. All his determination that she should be the one to bend—to admit her betrayal, to beg his forgiveness with her soft voice—all of it scattered from his grasp.

It was frankly unsettling how weak his renewed dedication against sentiment became in the face of her reproachful brown eyes. It was like none of it mattered, and all his meditations and careful decisions were for nothing. He simply couldn’t trust himself around her.

The tighter he tried to keep a hold of things, the more they seemed to slip away from him.

And she seemed to make it a point to meet his eyes from the foot of his throne, as if she knew it made it harder for him. He had curled his hand into a fist. Surely she could feel his turmoil through the Force.

He could never look away when he had her attention.

 _You betrayed me. You left me,_ he wanted to say. But he knew he would end up pleading, and pressed his mouth together instead.

He could feel his chest burning under the pressure of everything he felt, and after she had finally disappeared again without another word, he had to vent for hours afterward, running through vigorous saber forms.

He didn’t have any words for her then, and his words have only been choking him in the weeks since. The situation has been unbearable.

Finding her like this, though—unguarded and sleeping in his bed—is a first.

He removes his gloves thoughtfully, then his boots.

After a hesitant pause, he continues to disrobe as he would normally prepare for sleep at night. He removes his outer layers piece by piece until his torso is stripped bare, and lets the clothing fall quietly to the floor. Another moment is spent in consideration.

 _It’s my room_ , he tells himself finally. _Am I supposed to sleep fully clothed?_ He feels a little exposed, but also determined not to change his routine because of her, just as he is determined not to plead with her.

He decides not to think about where he’s going to sleep. One thing at a time.

It feels a little surreal to experience such a domestic scene for the first time in his life, shedding his clothes along with his weariness at the end of a long day, with a woman sleeping trustingly in his bed. If he lets his awareness wander, just brushing up against her quiescent presence in the Force, he can almost imagine she had fallen asleep waiting for him.

A pang goes through him at that thought, and he closes his eyes. After the pang doesn’t subside on its own, he works through the painful feeling like swallowing a remedy, rubbing his chest.

Kylo Ren can’t avoid facing the situation forever. He turns, half steeling himself and half knowing that he has been saving the sight of her sleeping as a special treat to savor.

It’s the first time he has seen her sleep. Just as he was avoiding looking at the bed before, he finds himself walking closer to the bed to better see her now.

The girl is like a gift waiting for him, curled in on her side with her hands in fists below her chin. The bed is small and ascetic—too small for him, one of countless small irritations he draws from to fuel his anger—but she fits in it nicely, like she belongs there.

She is sleeping, and she looks so young and peaceful that something unlocks inside him in response.

Without the pressure of the girl’s stare, he notices the dark loveliness of her eyelashes against her cheeks, the delicate wisps of hair framing her temples. There are small freckles dotting her skin, and her arms, uncovered in sleep, are muscled and beautiful. Her body is compact, her breasts moving slightly to the rhythm of her soft snores.

She snores.

He knows many things about her from their visions, and from seeing her memories. But the knowledge that she snores is new to him. It’s...

He tries to find the word for it. It’s not endearing. It’s more surprising.

He becomes aware that his lips have curled at the edges, and he schools his features.

Looking at her, the sensations that build up inside him are softer than his usual anger and resentment, but still overwhelming, still bubbling up to burst against his breastbone. Still unwelcome. Still too much.

He thinks about an old story of a sleeping maiden locked in a tower, waiting to be kissed awake and claimed by a hero. He wonders if that maiden snored.

He wants to lay down beside her and hold her warmth against him more than he’s wanted anything in his life. He wants to bury his face in her hair until he is surrounded by her.

“Ben,” Rey whispers in her sleep.

A thrill goes through Kylo, from the top of his head to the core of him. His name. The first word he’s heard her say since the throne room, and it’s his old name. She is dreaming of him.

He hears his own breathing, heavy in the intimate stillness of their connection, as if he has been running.

“Ben,” she says again, her brow furrowed. Her arms move, stretch out, as though she is struggling in her dream.

Without realizing, Kylo has unfolded toward her in answer, one knee on his bed and his hand stretching out to meet her. He catches himself in time before he touches her. He wants to touch her.

“Please,” Rey breathes.

The hitch in her voice is hooked to a hidden part of his chest, and when she speaks, he feels the hook twist and pull inside him. Rey is calling to him.

Kylo Ren knows nightmares. His life has been a series of nightmares. He has never once slept through the night without waking in the grip of terror. It has only become worse since he accepted what he truly is and answered the call of the dark. He understands now, as a man, the meaning of the nightly terrors he has suffered since he was too young to speak—he was born a monster. And monsters do not deserve the sleep of the just.

But Rey is not a monster.

He reaches out his hand and reaches across the galaxy to press bare fingers to her temple. If her dream is a nightmare, he will wake her. Even if she wakes up to look at him with her silent, accusing eyes, he won’t leave her trapped in it.

Her skin is soft and warm under his fingertips.

Kylo Ren is pulled into her dream.

 

* * *

  
In some distant part of Rey’s dreaming mind, she knows this scene happened years ago—before she had ever met him, and long before she had awakened as his equal in the Force.

But in this dream, Rey is there as it happens.

Like her old home on Jakku, the hut is small—only room enough for a small sleeping pallet. The boy’s possessions fill the shelf behind him in the quiet dark.

The boy is asleep.

Before her, Luke Skywalker stands over the boy’s unprotected back, weapon in hand. He ignites the lightsaber and a sickly green blade cuts through the darkness.

The boy jerks and looks back at his uncle with wide eyes.

Rey feels the injustice in her bones.

She had done nothing to stop this. She had not been there to save him. She had been too young—a child trapped in the desert. And this had happened in the dark of night, on a distant planet revolving around a distant star. There is no way she could have known. He had been so frightened without her.

But she is here now.

Rey activates her lightsaber and strikes without hesitation. Luke cries out and the green light dies, his lightsaber split in two. Master Luke lifts up two stumps where once his hands were, and bows his head. He disappears like a ghost, as if he had never been in the dream at all, a memory of regret, quickly forgotten.

“Ben!” Rey drops her saber in her rush for him.

It is her dream, and so, impossibly, the boy knows her. Of course they know each other. They would know each other anywhere.

She kneels to touch his shoulder and he shudders under her hand. He is warm under the white cloth of his nightclothes. He clutches her, terrified.

“Rey,” the boy chokes, wide-eyed. “He wanted to kill me.”

“He’s gone,” she tells him fiercely. “He’ll never hurt you. I won’t let him.”

His embrace is what her dreaming mind imagines it to be—warm and right—but he is trembling with fear and anger. She puts her arms around his neck, hugging him like she has longed to do, pressing his face to her neck.

“What did I do wrong?” he asks, muffled by her skin, hurt to the bone.

“Nothing. You did nothing wrong.”

“I saw what he was thinking,” he says, voice breaking. “Rey, he thinks I’m a monster.”

“You’re not a monster.” Her voice is so fierce it comes out in a growl.

“He thinks I’m bad. So did my—“ he chokes off, a watery whisper, “my mom and dad.”

It’s as if his parents’ memory has broken him all over again, on top of his uncle’s betrayal. His tears are wet against her neck. His sobs are quiet. She touches his back, soothing up and down, feeling victorious for having helped him, for having saved him. For being there to comfort him. Her arms are around him, securing him and grounding him. It feels right.

“They were wrong. You’re good,” she tells him. “You’re good, Ben.”

For some reason, hearing this makes him shake harder against her.

Slowly, eventually, his sobs die out, and his panic eases. He melts against her, until he feels utterly relaxed leaning on her, pliable and blanketing her. His hands brush against her back to mirror her comforting movements, stroking her gently.

“You saved me,” he says into her neck. “You always come to save me.”

“Yes,” she promises. “I always will.”

In this dream, there is nothing stopping her from making this promise. She feels free and complete, Ben safe in her arms with nothing that could ever come between them.

It doesn’t surprise her when he kisses her neck, shy. “I love you, Rey,” he confesses in a whisper.

Rey smiles, her eyes pricking with tears. This, too, feels right.

With a hand in his hair, Rey gently pulls Ben’s head back so she can see his face. It is unblemished in the moonlight—she has not yet met him, so the scar he carries from her hand is not cutting his cheek. His eyes are wide and black, searching hers. There are tiny droplets of tears still caught in the eyelashes framing his beautiful, plaintive eyes. His lips are full and large, mouth parted in a silent gasp.

Even in this dream of the past, Ben is a few years older than she is. But he looks so young and vulnerable, and she saved him. He is untouched and innocent, and she protected him. He is so beautiful.

He is hers, she knows. He is meant for her. They are meant to be together. She’s seen it, the belonging she dreamed of, all those lonely years.

Rey kisses his cheek, cold with his tears. Then, her mouth is drawn down to his.

Rey has never kissed anyone, so her dreaming mind invents the press of their lips in a hazy way—a softness, a spark between them. His long hair, tousled with sleep, brushes her forehead. His closeness after so long without him catches her breath. She feels like she has been waiting forever for this, for him.

Still kissing him, Rey pushes his wide shoulders to lie back down on his sleeping pallet, and he obeys her unspoken instruction almost demurely. Instinctively, she straddles his waist, pressing herself to him.

Ben gasps into her mouth, clutching her hips and biting back a groan.

Desire pools hot in her, and she can’t help but kiss him again, chasing the feeling.

Awake, she knows the mechanics of sex, if not the exact details—that his cock should become hard, and she should hold him inside her body until he gives her his seed. Asleep, the urge to press closer to him, to join that way with him, is an overwhelming, primal sensation that she has little control over.

In this dream, she simply wants everything he has to give. There is no reason for her to pause, not when she can feel him beneath her. She just _wants_ , she wants to fall into him.

“Can I have you?” Rey asks him, hands brushing down his wide chest to the belt of his night clothes.

“I’ve never—” he breaks off, and can’t seem to look at her. “I mean, I haven’t—”

Rey leans back, confused. He’s staring at the wall, and even in the moonlight she can sense his embarrassment.

He’s never had sex before? Well, neither has she. Like in every other thing, they are complete equals.

“Good. That means you’re mine.” Rey experiences the rare thrill of discovering an unclaimed but salvageable wrecked starship worth many portions. His repair would be her focus and her sustenance, and no one else would be allowed to touch him.

His eyes are wide in his face. Her bald declaration of ownership seems to touch him in a way she doesn’t quite understand. Ben circles her wrists with his hands, and leads them down to his clothes. “Then you’re mine, too.”

At that, she can understand how touched he felt to be claimed. She nods in agreement, and murmurs against his lips, “We’re for each other.” Her thoughts become less coherent when he grips her waist in his large hands. “Ben, I want you. I want to know what you feel like inside my body so badly.”

Ben gasps at her, eyes wide. He’s flushed all the way down to his chest. “Rey.” She likes the deep sound of his voice reverberating through her. It makes her want to grind down onto his hardness. She wants to, so she simply does, until they’re both gasping.

Rey’s hands are already busy untying his belt. It’s the least complicated thing in the world, in the dream, for her to unwrap his clothes to reveal her find. He might be the most valuable castoff treasure she’s ever defended and claimed.

His chest is broad, his muscles firm. She knows from life that Ben’s chest is dotted with the same moles that he has on his face. In her dream, his skin is soft. _He’s sensitive_ , she thinks, touching his nipples and seeing him shiver and breathe like a bellows beneath her.

Her hand traces down to the hardness she had been instinctively grinding herself against. Impatient, she pulls down Ben’s loose sleeping pants until his cock comes free. To Rey’s dreaming mind, he is large and thick and satisfying, and she circles him in her hand.

“Rey,” Ben gasps, his back arching off his pallet. He looks disbelieving, unmoored, touching her hand where she’s touching him. “I need you. Please.”

Rey’s core pulses. With her hand circling him, she feels strangely empty, but also expectant. She can imagine him filling her up.

She has mercy on them both, rising up only enough to free one leg from her pants, and then she straddles him again and pulls him into her to the hilt.

 

* * *

 

This is the scene that meets Kylo Ren when he is pulled into Rey’s dream. Having no physical form, he can only watch what unfolds before him as he reads her thoughts.

He sees the hut, his sleeping younger self, and his uncle’s betrayal. Before Kylo can think to react, Rey rescues his younger self. And then she gathers young Ben Solo in her arms.

Hearing the dead boy cry, and watching as Rey holds him and comforts him with soft words, an ache fills Kylo’s chest. She had said soft words like that to him once, too.

 _Is this what Rey dreams of at night?_ he wonders. Why is she still dreaming about saving him, even after she had rejected and abandoned him?

No, not _him_. This dream is a version of him who had died years ago. A version that only lived on in her dreams. He is a suitor her dreaming self could hold at a point where he was still light and worthy of her attention. This young man is an easy solution to their conflict.

That Rey still cares this much gives him a vindictive thrill. She cares as much as he does. She isn’t as unaffected and coolly disappointed in him as she wants him to think.

She dreams of solutions. She dreams of a world where she can hold him.

“You’re good,” Rey tells the boy in her arms. Kylo Ren feels her words strike him deeply, and he can’t seem to breathe properly.

What she’s saying is just a dream. If he could exert his will on her dream, Kylo Ren would show Rey. He would show her the truth of the young man in her easy embrace—that even Ben Solo had been dark inside, just as Kylo Ren is. Even back then, the darkness vied with the light within him in equal measure. Ben Solo had always been pitiful and weak. He had always struggled, and Rey’s efforts to save the boy wouldn’t ever have born the fruit she wanted.

Kylo Ren can’t stop Rey from soothing Ben Solo. And he can’t stop listening to her tender words, spoken to his younger, frightened self. He’s not sure he would, even if he could. The words affect him too, like a balm on a ghastly wound he had never let close. He didn’t know until this moment how much her defending him would mean to him.

Even if it is only a dream, it is a sweet dream.

It isn’t the nightmare that he thought it was, and Rey doesn’t need to be woken from it. He should leave. But he can’t tear himself away, not quite ready to leave her vicarious comfort behind.

It is more than just a sweet dream, Kylo soon learns.

The boy quietly declares his love for Rey, and Kylo twists with jealousy. When Rey kisses him in answer, Kylo’s feelings spike into a low, sick anger.

At the same time, as Kylo watches Rey push his younger self down into his bedding, in the lonely hut that Kylo knows full well had never once had a girl under its roof, the scene might be the most arousing he’s ever seen in his life. The anger and arousal swirl up inside him until he can’t tell the sensations apart.

He wishes this is how that night had happened. He wishes he had met her then, that she had rescued him. He wishes she had kissed him awake like the sleeping maiden.

Kylo Ren _yearns_.

Watching Rey grind down on his younger self in her dreams, hearing her noises, Kylo’s presses down on his cock through his clothes, pressing to relieve some of the ache. Hearing Rey ask for him, saying how much she wants to feel him inside her, Kylo trembles and frees his cock from his clothing enough for him to touch himself, helplessly.

His thoughts are half-formed, half-wild—all he knows is how much he wants her. He wants to be kissed, to be pressed down into his lonely bed. He wants to be good for her, worthy of her. He would do anything.

When Rey finally fills herself with Ben, Kylo gasps along with him, and strokes himself.

But Rey doesn’t move after that. She pauses and closes her eyes, seeming to enjoy the sensation of being completely filled. Then she reaches down to touch herself, still not moving. And the young man inside her doesn’t move or thrust up into her the way Kylo knows he would be compelled to.

Kylo holds his cock in his hand to mimic the way she simply holds Ben in her body. He squeezes himself tight in pulses, wondering how she would feel, like that.

He wonders if Rey had never watched that kind of holovid? In her lonely isolation, would she have had the opportunity? Maybe in her inexperience, she just doesn’t know to move during sex.

She is inadvertently using Ben for her own pleasure, simply holding herself full of him and touching herself, letting out sweet soft noises, little gasps. The young man who he used to be is moaning underneath her, pinned to the floor and helpless, hands grasping his blankets, giving all of himself over to her. Rey surrounds him, never leaving him for a moment.

Kylo imagines it would be torturous, but he would trade places in an instant if he could.

Kylo can feel his senses becoming fuzzy around the edges. He’s never been more aroused in his entire life.

As Rey nears her peak in the dream, she cries out. The tender sounds she makes pierce him, and she looks like a goddess to him, the one he’s waited for, and Kylo can’t help but call out to her, wanting to urge her to come. She is so beautiful.

“Rey,” he groans loudly, leaning above her in the bed.

Rey wakes up with a start, and Kylo comes out of her dreaming mind.

Rey blinks up at him.

Her eyes are half-lidded, mouth parted, the expression of a woman he knows was just dreaming of riding his cock, only to wake find him leaning on her bed beside her, more than hard for her, his hand holding himself obscenely. He should feel ashamed at being exposed before her, but he doesn’t. He feels only a thrill, and any shame he feels dissolves with the sight of her so far gone, her pupils blown out. She looks like the sleeping maiden awakened.

In the Force, he can feel her lust, completely unbridled and whipping around them both.

“Rey,” he breathes, utterly lost.

For a moment, Kylo hesitates. He both is and isn’t the one she was dreaming of taking inside her.

But to Rey, there doesn’t seem to be a distinction between the young man and the man before her. She is looking at him the exact way she looked in the dream. She licks her lips, glancing between his eyes and his mouth, and down to his hand around his cock.

Without a word, she instinctively pulls him down into the cradle of her thighs, rubbing up against him, making him hiss.

There’s only one coherent thought left in him at that—he wants to teach her about thrusting. He wants to brand the real thing into her, so she’ll only ever dream of him.

With that single goal in mind, he kneels between her thighs, bracing his arms near her shoulders, and thrusts against her, once, twice, more. Her sleeping clothes are in his way, but it still feels like lightning going through him. Through them both.

Rey throws her head back with a surprised gasp, and pulls him down to her, hands desperate in his hair. He knows she wants him to kiss her.

He wants nothing more than to kiss her, too.

He can feel her breath on his lips, but before their lips meet, the connection through the Force ends.

She is gone, vanished beneath him.

The warmth of her is no longer there, and he is left thrusting against air. His arms curl, disbelieving, into the place where her face had just been, and he can feel something wet prick at his eyes. He feels utterly abandoned, and desolate.

She had been there. He had held her in his arms in his bed. He had almost kissed her. They were so close—

“Fuck!” he yells, a sharp burst. It relieves some of his sharp feelings, his black rage, so he shouts it again, louder.

Kylo leans his face on his clenched fist, his other hand going to his leaking cock. He strokes himself, thinking of how she felt beneath him, chasing the feeling of her hands in his hair, her thighs around him.

But it’s the memory of what she said that finishes him. _You’re good_. He remembers how her voice had sounded. _I want you._

That’s enough—the thought of being safe and wanted. The image of her fighting for him, her soft words. He comes, releasing all across his sheets, groaning and shaking.

He collapses to his side, fists curling up with helpless rage and hurt at the unpredictability of their connection. That all he gets from her is phantom touches, that she always leaves him.

It takes a long time for him to recover. It’s the thought of what their next connection will be like that finally makes his brows relax.

She won’t be able to stare at him in silent disappointment now. He knows how she dreams of him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fulfills the prompt, but I'm thinking now that it might need another chapter to properly conclude it, so let me know what you think. Thank you for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the new tags for this chapter.

Rey’s hands clutch at nothing.

She feels cold, the delicious presence of him above her and surrounding her vanished. 

“Ben?” she asks the empty room, as if she can somehow call him back.

A bewildered hurt slowly spreads through her chest and up her throat. She falls back against her pillow, panting and trying to make sense of what just happened.

She had been dreaming. It was a dream about Ben, of saving him and having him. And when she woke up, he had been right there beside her, just like in her dream.

Rey hadn’t even thought. She had just reached out to him and instinctively pulled him to her. And, just as if he knew what she needed better than she did herself, he’d bracketed her with his body and rubbed against her, silently demanding her to meet his black, unblinking stare. His eye had twitched with some vast, repressed emotion.

His movement had been an insistent rhythm, one that felt new but familiar to her at the same time, as if pressing against her over and over was something deep, a secret written inside her body, just waiting to come awake. The way he moved against her felt like it was leading her somewhere. It was leading them both somewhere.

She had wanted it.

And then he had vanished.

She can still feel the ghost of his pressure between her legs. He had felt like a hard bar against her, and she moaned, reaching down under her clothes to cup her mound and recreate the pressure his pelvis and weight had given her.

He had almost kissed her.

When Rey had been a child in the desert, she had been alone. She had worked to feed herself, she put herself to sleep each night, and each morning she woke up on her own.

At night, tucked in the hammock she had slowly grown into, she would listen to the hot winds blowing through the cracks of her overturned AT-AT.

Whenever Rey couldn't find sleep as a lonely child, her mind would spiral out into the universe. She would imagine arms wrapped around her from behind, strong arms just holding her tight. Her mother or father, she thought. Or maybe someone else, someone other than her parents.

Surely that, too, would come to her. Surely one day, she would think. When her parents came back for her and fixed the mistake they made, and when her long solitude was finally over, then she could begin to search for the person she would love, and who would love her.

She knew, the same way she knew her parents would come back, that she would have a family of her own one day. Not today, and not tomorrow, but one day.

Sometimes she wondered where he was at that very moment, the person she would love. Was he on Jakku? Or was he on another planet? If she would one day meet him, and he was still waiting to meet her—at the thought that he hadn't met her yet, and was surviving without her, a deep sorrow would cut through her.

In daylight hours, she would brush her night's longing off as irrelevant and focus on the work she needed to do. She was still a child, motivated and hungry, brave at navigating dangers and clever at solving physical problems.

But holed up inside her makeshift home, with all night stretched out before her, Rey would think of being held and tell herself stories. She imagined herself on adventures, the kind of stories she heard sometimes from friendly pilgrims.

One of the best stories she invented and told herself, a story she would return to almost every night, was about a boy with kind eyes. He would be a stranger to Jakku, one of the unlucky abandoned scavengers just trying to learn to survive.

He would fall into danger, not because he was foolish, but because he just didn’t know the sands the way she did. And she would save him, snatching him out of danger just in the nick of time.

The story would always end in her favorite way—the rescued boy would kiss her, to show his deep gratitude, and to show how much he admired her, and she would blush fiercely just thinking about it. She would feel a giddy, private embarrassment, there in her hammock. A triumphant sweeping feeling would rush through her.

Sometimes, she would remember mid-story just how alone she was, and how unlikely the story was, and the thought that no one would ever hold her turned the sweet tender longing to sand in her mouth. But only sometimes.

It was more often that she could use the stories to lose herself for a time, just as she could lose herself in her flight simulators. Just a way to pass the time.

As she grew older, and her own questing, curious fingers began to explore her changing body, the sensations of her arousal mixed together with that giddy embarrassment and feeling of deep longing. She would touch herself and think of the boy’s grateful kiss, of the boy holding her.

Later, when she wrote down what she knew about how to scavenge and survive, her guide to Jakku, the thought of her book helping someone like the boy from her stories spurred her on.

When she touches herself now, in her bed where Ben had just vanished above her, she thinks of the the kisses from her stories.

Rey had wanted to kiss Ben even more than she had wanted him to continue moving against her, and she had wanted him to keep moving a very great deal. She wanted to know what kissing felt like. And it was _him_ , too, and that made it even more—more intense, more real and meaningful.

Ben had held himself in his hand.

Rey turns, pressing her face into her pillow.

She has never thought of that before, that he would touch himself that way, or how it would make her burn to see it.

And when he had said her name almost hesitantly, she could feel his feelings through the Force. His need had been like a physical pang of hunger, and she knew hunger.

He had pressed into her so urgently. He had needed something from her so desperately that it called up an answering yearning inside her. It was a commanded in a language without words, a demand to follow.

All it takes is her hand pressing in that same rhythm, the thought of almost being kissed, the memory of his real presence, and she is coming, her orgasm rendering her insensible and shaking for long seconds in a way that had never happened before. The reality of his touch made it real.

As her breath slows, she comes back to herself, dry reality comes to settle inside her as well, like sand in her mouth.

 

* * *

  
The next Rey sees him in the Force, Rey is standing in a garden.

The Resistance has taken secret refuge on Naboo. To Rey, it is an impossibly soft, green world, a world of luxury and unbelievable leisure.

The plants are like the collection of small, beautiful things that Rey had gathered on Jakku—except they are more beautiful, and they are everywhere she looks.  Few of the plants are edible, she is told. They are not useful. Their use is only to be beautiful. An entire army of gardeners keeps it in order. It confuses Rey that so much work goes into what amounts to decoration, but it’s nice that there are people whose jobs are just to make the world more beautiful for everyone.

She had spent the morning working quietly alongside the gardeners, digging her hands into black, loamy soil that she's never felt before but makes her heart sing. Rey is learning how to take care of plants. It’s a strange waste to pour water on the ground, but that’s how they drink. Infant seeds would grow into childlike saplings which would grow into tall adult trees, if given enough time and space, and weren’t damaged before they reached their potential. They would do it as long as they have light and water, which strikes her as brilliant.

It isn't Jedi work. She had been told that in some confusion, by the head gardener,  but he is wrong. The Force flows between all things. She can feel it clearly in the soil, the cycle of life moving in a rich and infinite circle.

And besides, what is Jedi work to her? She feels the Force, but she is not a Jedi. She can’t unlock the knowledge the Jedi knew.

Rey has come up against a hard roadblock in her translation of the Jedi texts. All her skill and experience with language is good for nothing without a key to decipher the language. The illustrations are beautiful, but mysterious, and less than helpful.

She has meditated in the Force, trying to feel the connections between the tiny characters, to suss out the balance and meaning in their relationships. It feels like trying to climb up a steep sand dune the hardest possible way, up the leeward slope.

The meaning escapes her, and frustrates her, until finally she leaves her rooms entirely to work on something useful in the sunlight and air.

She keeps busy. She keeps her mind fixed on problems she can solve. She works outside. She wears her body out so she falls asleep as soon as her head hits her too-soft pillow. Otherwise—

His eyes had been so intense, braced above her. His arms had been like iron bands warmed by the sun. She had felt the full weight of his howling need in the Force, like a black storm swirling around them both, grasping at her with greedy tendrils.

He must have watched her dream as she was having it. It’s the only explanation.

She’s half angry that he would do something like that, and half ashamed that he saw such a revealing, secret dream. A dream about him.

She would just have to do a better job of shutting him out.

Rey experiences a sense of exposed wrongness, the same feeling she always had whenever she had discovered something valuable just out of her reach at the tail end of a day scavenging.

She had always been strict with herself, following her own rules, forcing herself to always put her own safety first, to leave whatever it was for the next day to make certain she left for home with enough water, fuel and daylight to spare.

Even if whatever she found was incredibly valuable, and even if she would only be a little late if she retrieved it. Her ironclad rule was to always be cautious, leave it and come back the next day.

She isn’t about to go the way of other scavengers, poor fools who were too greedy and paid for it with their lives.

That doesn’t make it easy. Leaving something of value behind always makes her itch at the best of times—the thought of having to leave Ben behind in order to wait for a better, safer time to reclaim him gives her the unhappy urge to start marking the days on her wall again.

There are few things worse than knowingly leaving a piece of scavenge in plain sight so any other scavenger could find it. Anyone could turn to Ben Solo and suddenly realize his tremendous value. She isn’t there to defend her claim. They could see what he was and mishandle him, or meddle around with him, or try to dismantle him or break him.

The horrible truth is that it had already happened to him before, many times. She is right to fear it happening to him again.

But an even worse thing could happen—that no one would recover him, and the sands would be shifted by the great sand storms and bury him once again, under all that anger and hate, until he is truly gone beyond her reach forever.

Rey had left it to the Force’s will.

The worst part is that she knows the Force isn't done with him. The Force will make him its instrument. She knows it. She just doesn’t know how long they have to wait.

She’s so tired of waiting.

The Force shifts subtly, sound and space bending. He appears, turning to face her. Rey can’t help it, that her heart jams against her ribs. It is as if her wayward thoughts called him across the galaxy. She lets herself look at him.

Her instincts look first for signs of his health, and the odds of his continued survival. He is uninjured and whole, but he looks tired. He’s looked tired ever since he killed his father, and he still looks like he isn’t sleeping. There are smudges under his brown eyes.

It isn’t good to go without sleep. It makes even hardened survivors make silly, easily avoided mistakes.

He looks just as tired, but the feeling of him is different.

Since she last spoke to him, Ben has always looked at her so unhappily, half fear and half hope. She could feel his quiet self-loathing and turmoil, his choked-back words.

She had been angry at him. His unhappiness was his own fault, and his tangible regret made her feel better.

But that is gone. There is no uncertainty in him. He is steady in the Force, the way he had been before he killed Snoke to save her life.

He had always looked at her with an intensity that should have put her on guard. But the focused way he looked at her before was mere passing curiosity compared to how intensely he looks at her now.

He’s looking at her like he knows how much she liked it when he pressed against the private place between her legs, like he knows a secret that she’s tried to keep hidden all her life.

She can feel herself blushing furiously in the open air.

He’s smug. And he’s expectant.

Embarrassment, anger, and strange guilt sits like a stone in her stomach. She doesn’t want to have this conversation. She doesn’t want to talk about her sex dreams, or how she had so tellingly opened to him.

“Go away,” she tells him. It sounds brusque even to her own ears.

This is obviously not what he expected. She sees a flash of hurt ripple across his face. His eye twitches, and his steadiness in the Force unravels and darkens like building storm clouds.

He takes a step toward her. “No.” He shakes his head in a jerk. “You aren’t allowed to look at me like that. Not anymore. Not after—”

“Not after what?” she challenges.

“Not after what I saw last night.” His voice is deep and dark.

Exactly what she doesn’t want to talk about. “You shouldn’t have read my mind while I was sleeping. That was none of your business.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Wasn’t it? From what I saw, it was my business. It had everything to do with me. Didn’t it?”

Well, he isn’t wrong. But it’s not like she can control her dreams. She doesn’t owe him an explanation. In fact, her face might flame off if she tried.

So she tries to defect. “And then you— you were naked! You were—” she scans the open field, sees they are still alone, and hisses, quieter, “You were touching yourself!”

“You didn’t protest at the time.” She can see the tips of his ears are bright red, but he otherwise gives no sign of sharing her embarrassment.

“Well, I was—” she sputters. “You woke me up. I was surprised.”

He takes one step closer to her, looking like he finally found the answer to a question he’d long asked himself. “You were surprised, so you pulled me to you. You were so surprised, you almost kissed me. Is that it?”

He’s as near to her as he can get without touching her legs with his.

She doesn’t give ground, staying where she stands without leaning back. But she does make the mistake of glancing down to his lips.

She remembers the urge she had felt to kiss him, like standing at the top of a dune, waiting to start the inevitable slide down.

“Rey,” he says softly. “Don’t hide from me. There’s no point. You want something. You should say it.”

Rey feels exposed, and a familiar loneliness runs through her. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I can’t have it.”

“Rey,” he says, frustrated. He presses his mouth together.

She looks away, toward the line of saplings she had helped plant. “How’s the First Order, Supreme Leader? How is creating your great new order all alone? You look tired.” It comes out less biting than she wants it to.

“It’s fine,” he says dismissively. “And if I look tired, it’s because I’m losing sleep.”

“You have a guilty conscience.”

“No. That’s not it. It’s your fault,” he informs her.

Incredulity rises in her. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You did. Every time I close my eyes, I see how we looked together in your dream.”

Rey inhales sharply. His eyes are open, deep pools of emotion. His presence in the Force has settled again, and he is again focused and calm. It’s as if the memory of her dream grounds him.

“It isn’t too late,” he continues softly, echoing her own words back to her. “You can have what you want.”

She had been given what she wanted rarely in her life. She had been constantly disappointed. She had wanted her parents, and they had sold her. She had wanted to save Ben Solo, and he had made her wait.

“And what do I want?” she asks him.

“You want me. You want some solution to this.”

Rey doesn’t deny it. “I wanted to take you with me. I thought we would never have to be alone again. You should be sitting next to me.”

At her admission, desperation flashes over his features. “Tell me where you are. I’ll come to you.”

“You’ll come with armies. You know I can’t risk it.”

“Rey, plea—” He cuts himself off, taking a step back, looking absolutely livid with himself.

She doesn’t know the reason for his anger, but his surge of feeling in the Force makes her tired.

It still isn’t the right time. Not like this.

She steps to him, reaches across the galaxy, and touches his scarred cheek with her hand.

He jerks in surprise, his eyes wide and searching hers. When her hand falls away, some of the living black soil remains on his cheek.

“Be patient, Ben.”

And there’s the expression she’s used to seeing from him—lost and wanting, matching how she feels.

Rey closes their connection once again.

 

* * *

 

A week later, during his sleep cycle, Kylo Ren wakes up with a start.

Rey’s arm is around his waist. He had finally fallen asleep in his small bed, only to be woken by the foreign feeling of being touched in his sleep.

Touched by her. She is holding him, arm curled around his waist and hand cupping his chest. Rey is asleep, he is relatively sure. Her breath is puffing on the back of his neck in time with her steady snores.

By all rights, Kylo should feel resentful, or even enraged. She had shut him out yet again, even after admitting she wanted him with her. She had once more reduced him begging her, yet again, like he knew he would, even though he had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t.

But it just feels good to be held. He’s never been touched like this, not that he can remember. It’s like she’s holding his whole self in the palm of her hand.

After Rey touched his cheek, admitted her desire but still refused to come to him, he had felt betrayed and rejected, the wound digging a deeper track into already-existing wounds. He still hadn’t overcome his sentiment, the way Rey had a talent for.

He had told himself it would be for the best if he never saw her again. And for a long week, he hadn’t.

She shifts in her sleep, curling toward him even more, her arm around him tightening and her hand caressing his chest absently. Her leg tangles between his, and he can feel her face press against his neck. She is clinging to him.

Rey makes an approving noise in her throat, settles, and begins to snore again.

It’s a thousand times worse than the sentimental, puerile, fleeting thought of her sleeping in his bed, waiting for him. Because she is touching him in his bed. She is hugging him. This is real. This is how it would feel if she meant it. He isn’t alone.

His breathing changes, stumbles. Heaviness and pain blooms in his chest and his eyes feel wet.

Rey’s presence is warm and real around him, her arm securing him, and he feels wetness absorbed by the thin pillow below his cheek.

Pathetic. Sentimental. When will he be free of this weakness? Will he ever be free?

He can’t help it. It feels so good.

Kylo doesn’t want to wake her. He doesn’t want this to end, for her to stop holding him. He wants more—he always has since he was small. He had always felt strongly and desired too much, more than he was allowed, more than he was ever given. He would never be satisfied, ever, as long as he lives.

He has to stay quiet. He wills himself to stillness, and for his breathing to steady.

Kylo focuses on the way her hand feels touching his chest. If she slips her hand down his chest, she could slide her hand down to his... It was something she could do if she wants, in her current position, the way her arm holds him. She’s touching his chest, so it isn’t impossible.

Without consciously deciding to do so, his own hand has cupped his genitals in an unconscious soothing gesture. Normally, this gesture wouldn’t necessarily be sexual, but her nearness has already turned his cock heavy and hard in readiness, and as he touches himself, he nearly gasps at the stimulation while being held securely around his waist.

 _Her hand_ , he thinks. _It could be her hand holding me._

He can feel himself breathing louder, and tries to be quiet. And he feels out of control as he moves his hand down his shaft, trying to be still at the same time.

If she wakes up to him masturbating in her arms, she really will leave and never come back.

Never had his release careened at him so fast. He’s going to come. He can’t be quiet.

Too late, he realizes that her snoring has stopped. He can feel her stiffening behind him, hears her gasp, and he goes still as the dead, agonized by his cut-off orgasm, but mostly mortified at being witnessed.

Seconds pass, and then—

“I want to see,” Rey says quietly behind him, and his heart leaps into his throat.

* * *

  
Rey wakes up feeling warm.

Her arm is around Ben’s bare chest, and she’s not even a little upset at the discovery. His chest is very nice, she thinks sleepily, groping him. Sturdy. But his skin is surprisingly soft, and it gives her tender, protective feelings.

It feels so good to hold someone after all those years of complete isolation that she nuzzles into him. A sense of rightness permeates her.

And then she realizes why his arm is moving the way it is, and she gasps.

Ben stills instantly. Rey can sense his shock. That he wants the earth to swallow him on the spot makes her feel better.

“I want to see,” she says.

She feels a bit sheepish when he doesn’t respond for many seconds. He doesn’t even seem to be breathing for that matter.

“You don’t have to,” she adds quietly.

He moves finally, turning on his back to look at her. At the same time he covers himself firmly with a blanket. Her bunk is the same tiny size his bed is, so when he turns, his huge body claims most of the space and she has to sit up, balancing with her hands on his chest.

“What happened to ‘be patient?’” he asks, voice clipped.

“I...” The reality of Ben touching himself in her arms was such an urgent issue it had sent all her concerns out the door. It’s hard to concentrate on the cause when she’s touching his bare chest for the first time. He’s distracting.

“You won’t be with me even when I’ve _begged_ you,” he continues bitterly. “You leave, always. You shut me out. But then you tell me to be patient. You dream of saving me. You dream about having sex with me.”

Rey feels red-faced, but she can’t look away from his eyes. “My vision,” she chokes out, feeling his skin under her fingers. “You saw my past, but I saw your future. That future still hasn’t happened.”

She can tell he hadn’t expected that response. Ben looks hurt, but now he is curious, too, as if she brought up a surprising point in a lecture.

“You made a choice,” she says. “I won’t stand with you as you are now. Not on opposite sides of a war, with you leading everything I’m fighting against. I hate it. It isn’t right.”

His mouth sets in a grim line, and she can sense that he would sit up to leave altogether, except that would mean breaking off her touch. Rey splays out her hands across his chest, stilling him.

“But my vision _will_ happen, one day,” she says. “One day we’ll stand together again, for good. And we won’t ever have to be alone again. Trust that.”

He listens, taking in her words like the soil welcomed the water.

“I’ve been waiting,” she says seriously. “And I was willing to wait as long as I did for my parents. But I’m tired of waiting. And the Force keeps putting us together like this. I think the Force telling us this will help.”

Rey brushes her hands across his chest, sweetly beseeching him as much as she knows how, trying to make him see it the way she does.

This is for them both, to tide them over.

“Ben, I want to see you. If you want to show me.”

He searches her eyes for long moments, looking for something. He finds it.

“I do,” Ben says solemnly.

She can feel his determination and his apprehension.

He searches her eyes as he finally reaches down again. He removes the blanket, and she sees him clearly for the first time without his hand in the way.

A shiver goes through her. His cock is bigger than she imagined, and red in a way that makes her think of anger. But the more she looks, the more she decides it matches him well, that he be thick and big and angry down there, too.

Still looking at her face, Ben pulls on his cock, gripping and twisting roughly whenever he reaches the head. He’s so cruel that through the Force, Rey can sense he feels thick threads of pain along with only the slightest pleasure. He’s feeling mostly pain, the way he punishes himself.

It reminds Rey of how he had struck his own wound in the forest until he bled. She can feel the Force darkening around him, drawn out like a living creature by his self-inflicted pain.

Rey thinks about a sapling, twisted and warped by forces other than the simple sun and water it needed to grow into a tree.

“Don’t!” Rey cries.

Ben freezes completely. Betrayal and humiliation thread through his feelings of pain.

She reaches out to touch his forearm. “Don’t be mean,” she tells him. “Be gentle to yourself.”

Ben looks at her for long moments, frozen. And then seems to consider. Under her gaze, his grip relaxes. His forearm moves under her arm as he strokes himself again. This time, he moves slowly, gently. Ben doesn’t twist or pinch himself.

She can feel his pleasure again in the Force. All he feels is pleasure, without any pain. His back fairly arches off the bed. His thighs tense in little jerks, fucking sweetly into his own hand.

“Rey,” he moans. He reaches his free hand out to grip her thigh, needing to touch her.

His hand around his cock is hypnotic to her. There’s that primal rhythm again, the one she felt when he pressed into her. She wants to touch him, say something to him, but she feels too caught by what’s happening to move. Her blood is rushing in her face, and lower. She feels swollen and wet between her legs in sympathy.

“Rey,” he says, needy.

She releases his arm to stroke his chest, to touch the scar running up his neck. She cups his chin, traces his mouth with her thumb, feeling his panting breath. He’s staring in her eyes, willing her to look at him, only him. She can feel his need like a thick blanket.

She’s breathing hard, and she hasn’t even done anything but watch him. She feels like she’ll die if he stops.

“I’m close, Rey,” he pants desperately. He hasn’t been touching himself very long.

“Tell me,” she says in a rush. “Tell me what you need.”

“Please, say—“ he manages to choke out, then bites off with a loud moan. He holds his hand still for a few moments, and her heart beats in her throat at the thought of him stopping short, but then she feels his grim determination to hold onto control and she understands.

She can feel what he needs her to say to him. Rey weaves her fingers into his beautiful hair, looking down his broad body to watch his hand move, enraptured.

“I want you, Ben.” 

With that, his movements become frantic, and he’s squeezing her thigh and groaning as he comes. His seed comes out of him in spurts, which is very different than Rey had imagined. It’s more than she thought, too, and it goes farther—he paints his own chest with it.

Afterward, his winded panting slows, and he gets strangely languid. For once, all his tension, his overflowing need has been washed away, leaving him only contentment.

She feels satisfaction as well, beyond her own urge to touch herself. Maybe he will be able to sleep, now. Then he’ll be safer.

Some of his seed had landed near her hand on his chest, and Rey can’t help her curiosity. She touches it with her fingers, and finds it strangely viscous yet translucent. When she slips her fingers into her mouth, the taste reminds her of the salt water of Ahch-to.

Ben watches her intently, his eyes black as pitch.

“Do you like it?” he asks her.

Rey nods. “It’s good.” The taste and texture is interesting, and she’s eaten much blander food to survive.

Her answer seems to stun him, and he glances from her eyes to her mouth.

It’s all new. The intimacy of touching bare skin. The way his cock looks now, resting quietly against his thigh. The feeling of her hand, still entangled in his hair. 

And this is new, too—when she finally lets herself kiss him, leaning down to press her lips to his.

 _I saved you_ , she thinks. _You’re safe._

It’s new when she feels his warmth radiating from him, and feels his breath puff out across her cheek. His lips are soft and full, and when he uses his tongue in the smallest lick, she makes an embarrassing noise into his mouth. 

Rey gets so eager at finally kissing him that he has to bring his hands up to hold her face, to guide and steady her. She’s humming loudly without shame, and without even knowing she’s doing it. She’s writhing, and as she straddles him, she has the thought that she would like him to roll over and rub on her again.

The Force disconnects them again, mid-kiss. Rey’s hands fall down to the mattress below her, but she catches herself, and then lets herself fall face-forward onto her pillow.

Rey has the wild urge to laugh, and so she does, muffled into the pillow. He showed her. She held him and kissed him.

She found the boy she was waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your enthusiasm and encouragement for chapter one, and thanks for reading this as well. My heart is so happy, and I read your comments over and over.
> 
> This began as practice writing these characters mixed with smut-writing practice, and I think it may be another chapter before I’m finished. Thank you for reading!


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